Startup wants to transform Nepalese agriculture with aeroponics

It was quite long back that Caesar Rana and Biplove Singh had realised that while people’s standard of living had risen, the quality of vegetables available in the market had significantly dropped. Hence, they founded AeroRoots 28 months ago with the vision to create a platform for a pesticide-free tomorrow.

“We realised the use of pesticides in vegetables was quite staggering and started to question one another if the vegetables we were consuming were safe,” shares Singh.

Rana and Singh then started playing with the idea of growing one’s own vegetables and they felt the rooftop farming technique could work in Kathmandu. However, as both came from the management background, they had to do a lot of research.

“After doing some research, we found out about ‘soilless’ farming and aeroponics. We felt that the idea of growing vegetables in the air was quite extravagant. But, we knew it could be done because we were using the same method NASA had created in the 1990s,” adds Singh.

In 2017, Rana and Singh designed a system with over 150 plants and put it at Rana’s house. “At that point, we were in a hit and trial process. We didn’t know if our system would work,” shares Rana.

Of the 150 plants they had planted, only one survived. But the survival of one plant was enough to give the two partners the boost to continue the project which they started as a dream.